Category Archives: Business

| Business, In the news, Media, Navel-gazing

Canwest cuts 560 jobs nationwide

CBC and CP and Reuters and the Star and the Globe and AFP and The Tyee have the stories, based largely on Canwest’s own press release. Others have inexplicably slapped bylines on stories that are based entirely on the press release. Canwest’s own news service also has a story, which exclusively quotes Canwest.

There aren’t any specific breakdowns beyond 210 in broadcasting and 360 in publishing, but it represents more than 5% of the entire workforce.

This all comes less than a month after the CRTC said Canwest and other conventional TV broadcasters couldn’t charge fees for local cable companies carrying their stations.

As a contract worker, it means I probably won’t be hired as a permanent employee any time in the coming century.

We’ll see.

UPDATE: Bill Brioux of TV Feeds My Family has some analysis of the broadcast side. Meanwhile, J-Source has some not-too-flattering comments about Canwest’s money troubles

| Business, In the news, Opinion, Technology

The failed business model by Circuit City

The Source outlets in Canada (including this one in the Eaton Centre downtown) remain open for business

The Source outlets in Canada (including this one in the Eaton Centre downtown) remain open for business

Dear Circuit City,

I’ve never been to any of your U.S. stores, so I can’t really comment on why you’re facing bankruptcy right now. But I have been to The Source, your Canadian outlets that used to be Radio Shacks, and it doesn’t surprise me that your Canadian subsidiary is also filing for bankruptcy protection.

I realize it’s convenient to blame this on the economic downturn, but may I offer some other suggestions:

And yet, shockingly, you’re in the hole. I guess that means this job you just posted in TMR isn’t getting filled…

| Business, TV, Video

Globaltv.com to stream Family Guy, 24

Canwest (disclosure: my employer) has announced that it has signed an online streaming agreement with Fox which will give it Canadian online distribution rights to Family Guy, 24, Prison Break and Bones. This is in addition to House, Heroes and .. uhh … all those great Canadian programs that Global produces, like … uhh … that thing about the hair salon… yeah.

The full episodes are streamable on Global TV’s video site here, which a lot of people still don’t know about. CTV has a similar site at watch.ctv.ca for its programs and programs owned by its specialty channels, such as ER, Grey’s Anatomy and the Daily Colbert with Stephen Stewart.

| Business, In the news, Media

Strike ends at Winnipeg Free Press

Workers at the Winnipeg Free Press, who have been on strike for two weeks now, last night voted to approve a new contract presented by their employer. Details are a bit sketchy, but the wage increases are 2% a year, with 1.5% during the final 9 months. The employer apparently also took the merging of newsroom jobs off the table.

The union executive didn’t recommend the contract to its members (it didn’t recommend against it either, saying it needed a mandate from members before it could go further). But the union tells CP it thinks it got a fair deal. (More coverage from Reuters and UPI)

The FreePressOnStrike.com website has been shut down, and the Free Press will be published again starting tomorrow.

Welcome back.

| Business, Media, Technology

The slow death of TV guides

Erik Kohanik and the disappearing TV column

Erik Kohanik and the disappearing TV column

Next time you’re browsing through your digital cable or satellite on-screen guide, give a thought to Eric Kohanik, who until recently provided what little editorial content was left in Canwest’s TV Times. Now even that was deemed too much, according to Bill Brioux.

TV Guide in Canada ceased paper production long ago, and the TV Times that’s distributed in Canwest’s newspapers (including The Gazette) is a shell of its former self (now it’s just a few pages of daytime and prime-time grids for the most popular channels).

This is what you talk about when you’re talking about technology cutting jobs and creating others. Some people with basic analog cable are still attached to their paper-based guides, but more and more are throwing them straight into the recycling bin.

It seems no one watches The Watcher.

| Business, Media, Opinion

Free Press dispute gets nasty

(Not that I’ve ever witnessed a labour disruption that didn’t get tense)

Normally, in a show of good faith and to allow the bargaining process to proceed, both sides of a labour negotiation will keep the details of what’s said during talks to themselves. The union will advise its membership of any major issues, as well as give a general idea how talks are going, but that’s about it.

When the door closes and workers are on strike or lockout, that changes. It usually starts with the union, which decides to negotiate through the media. Inevitably, the employer responds to correct any “fals” or “misleading” statements that sully its good name.

The Winnipeg Free Press is on that course. Workers went on strike last week and quickly started up a competing news website at freepressonstrike.com, which includes news about the strike itself.

Yesterday, the Free Press (which can’t put out a newspaper and is instead just posting updates to its website) issued a statement correcting the record and offering its side of the dispute. Its main argument is that workers are paid well (better than at other papers) and get good benefits (like sick leave and holidays and stuff!). That statement led to stories from Canadian Press and CBC (the latter also talks about some silliness involving pork).

The striking workers countered with their own statement that many workers are paid at or near (or even below) minimum wage, and that it has been open and honest, posting offers on its website for all to see.

Unfortunately, both statements make both sides look childish in this process, and are good indications for why this kind of thing is normally not done. Both sides essentially accuse the other of being unreasonable and refusing to negotiate. It’s like two three-year-olds complaining to their mother that the other one is being mean.

Meanwhile, talks resumed this morning, as the union issued another statement that it had begun picketing a non-union shop that was distributing flyers for the FP (the publisher does not understand why a union on strike would have a problem with that?)

Here’s hoping those talks go well.

| Business, Media, Technology

Sun Media begins using electronic newspapers

Sun Media, which owns the Sun papers, Journal de Montréal/Québec, London Free Press, 24 heures and the Osprey chain (Kingston Whig-Standard, Sudbury Star et al), has signed a deal with NewspaperDirect to make electronic versions of the papers available to subscribers. No word on when this is going to start.

The NewspaperDirect service, which is used by the entire Canwest chain including The Gazette, produces exact copies of the paper, almost like PDFs, except with DRM so you can’t save them (at least on a Mac) and only two levels of zoon (my personal pet peeve). On the other hand, it provides some bells and whistles like having an automated reader read articles aloud.

With Transcontinental also working with NewspaperDirect (and over 700 publications in their repertoire), it’s clear that the Vancouver-based company provides a service that is either too hard or too expensive to try to duplicate.

I used it for about a year in order to save on recycling hassle, save the environment and save on subscription price. Though the saving on paper was fun (especially as I look around my living room now), reading the newspaper on my computer screen (and having to manipulate it with my laptop trackpad) and then watching TV and doing other stuff on my computer screen all day can put stress on the eyes, not to mention my posture.

Sure, I could go outside and have a life or something, but let’s be realistic…

| Business, Media, Navel-gazing, Opinion, Sports

Declining sports coverage

The Globe and Mail has a piece about how U.S. newspapers, facing budget and staff cuts, are reducing the amount of coverage they are giving to NHL teams (via Habs Inside/Out). Some are only covering home games, some aren’t covering their own NHL teams at all. Instead, they focus on baseball, basketball and football, which are much more popular and sell more newspapers.

We can poo-poo them, as we live in the hockey capital of the universe where each paper has about a half-dozen people covering every home game and at least one on the road for every away game. But while our hockey coverage remains strong, other sports like NBA, soccer, NFL football and others have fallen off the radar, and coverage of major-league baseball has virtually disappeared since the Expos left town.

And sports, like cars and movie listings and crosswords, are supposed to sell newspapers, generating the revenue to offset the cost of investigative reporting, arts coverage and editorials. When even they are getting cut, you know there’s something seriously wrong.

I’m still, to a large extent, a rookie in this business. I have no recollection of the good ol’ days when newspapers spent like drunken sailors, had hundreds of reporters and essentially controlled the news.

Instead, I live in a world of increasing cutbacks, threats of more cutbacks (or worse), rising prices, fewer voices, more wire service copy and newspapers struggling to get by with their massive bureaucracies and middle-age staff, their future extinction seemingly a foregone conclusion.

And, like hundreds of newspaper managers across the developed world, I have no clue how to fix it. Or even if that’s possible. (Though if I did know, I could make millions…)

Kind of a sobering thought.

But then again, I’m an eternal optimist. And I’m naive enough to think that I can help them get through this slow crisis, so that’s what I’ll do in my own little way.

| Business, Media, Montreal, Navel-gazing

Gazette editorial dept. votes 98% for strike mandate

At a general meeting Sunday afternoon, members of three bargaining units at the Montreal Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at The Gazette, voted overwhelmingly in favour of a strike mandate.

The results:

  • Editorial: 98% (Representing reporters, photographers, photo processors, desk clerks, graphic artists and copy editors including myself)
  • Reader Sales and Service: 100% (Representing what’s left of the department after the call centre was outsourced to Winnipeg)
  • Advertising: 59% (Representing sales staff and other advertising workers outside the classified department)

Turnout was 70% of the 182 members.

Two other units, representing the business office and classified advertising, are currently under contract and are unaffected by this.

This vote greatly strengthens the union’s bargaining position as the two sides return to the table on Tuesday. It does not necessarily mean there will be a strike, but it does give the bargaining committee the power to call one if negotiations break down and they decide it’s necessary. The employer is currently in a lock-out position.

The main issues on the table are:

  • Jurisdiction (a clause in the collective agreement that prohibits the employer from hiring non-unionized employees to do work normally done by the union, a clause that the guild argues is already being violated by the outsourcing of copy editing to Canwest Editorial Services in Hamilton, Ont.)
  • Wages (the employer is offering no wage increase, the union’s starting demand is 6% per year)
  • Job classification (the employer is asking that the distinction between reporter, critic, photographer and graphic artist be eliminated so employees can be forced to do jobs in more than one of these categories for no extra pay)

This strike mandate vote follows a similar one by the Ottawa News Guild representing workers at the Ottawa Citizen. They voted 83% in favour (though they had a higher turnout) and eventually settled on a 2-2.5% wage increase over five years (double what the employer had offered before the strike vote), with no jurisdiction guarantees.

UPDATE: Le Devoir has a brief about it. It describes the job classification issue as the “main issue,” which I think is debatable. The Gazette also has a brief, including a quote from publisher Alan Allnutt about how surprised he was by this vote.

| Business, Media, Navel-gazing

Ottawa Citizen workers accept contract deal

Members of the Ottawa Newspaper Guild, which represents workers in the newsroom of the Ottawa Citizen, have accepted a contract offer that includes wage increases of 2.5% the first year, 2% the next three years and 2.5% the final year.

This sets the stage for a coming strike vote at the Gazette this Sunday.

And the union executive isn’t happy about the rejecting of their recommendation.

| Business, TV

When is a channel not a channel?

Hey, remember back when I said you should expect CTV’s competitors to get mad when it decided to brand a regional split of TSN into a separate channel called TSN2?

Yeah, they got mad.

TSN says it’s respecting the letter of the law, and that only 10% of programming will differ between the channels. But Score Media wants the CRTC to clarify that this should apply to advertising as well.

Either way, TSN is selling this as an entirely separate cable channel, not as a split feed. And that, at least, seems to be going against the spirit of its license.

| Business, Media, Montreal, My articles

New Monday Gazette (with TWIMy goodness)

New Monday Gazette front (Sept. 8, 2008)

New Monday Gazette front (Sept. 8, 2008)

The four of you who still read paper newspapers will notice a dramatic shift in Monday’s Gazette. It’s gotten smaller.

The most dramatic change is the consolidation of the news, Your Business and Arts & Life sections into the A section, similar to what happens in the Sunday paper. The Sports section is unchanged (in fact, it’s a larger-than-normal 10 pages this week), as is the ad-generating Driving section. The length of the paper reduces overall by about six pages.

Editor-in-Chief Andrew Phillips is honest in his note to readers today about why this is happening:

The main reason for the change is that the cost of newsprint is rising dramatically. In the past year, it has gone up by about 24 per cent, and it is adding more than $2 million to our annual expenses. Fuel costs, as everyone knows, have also gone up sharply.

The fact is we can’t keep printing the same size newspaper at a time when the competition for advertising revenue (which makes up about three-quarters of our income) is much tougher. The time is long past when newspapers like The Gazette could just absorb extra costs and pass all of them on to advertisers.

Of course, no doubt some readers won’t agree (especially when it’s combined with a slight increase in subscription rates), so Andrew and the rest of the staff are fully ready for an onslaught of complaints. He has a blog post explaining the situation, and readers are encouraged to comment there, or by email to his address or the new monday@thegazette.canwest.com.

As if in answer to management’s prayers to give them some cover fire, the New York Times also announced that it would be consolidating sections to save on newsprint. One of my colleagues got the idea to run a story about that in the Your Business section today, and Andrew points that out to readers.

(UPDATE Sept. 11: Andrew has a summary of the reaction, which is negative, but not as bad as he feared)

Here’s what’s changed

The new layout of A1 (as seen above) emphasizes the newspaper’s slew of Monday columnists (because, try as they might, little news happens on Sundays), with quotes along the side from marquee names.

Content-wise, the changes are modest:

  • Your Business takes the biggest hit, dropping to only three pages (1.5 if you discount the ads). This essentially means there will be one entrepreneurial feature story instead of two. Don Macdonald’s and Paul Delean’s columns are still there. It will also no longer be able to take advantage of the occasional extra page that pops up at the last minute when obituaries are light.
  • Editorial and Opinion pages are, for the first time, combined into a single page, with an opinion piece along the bottom, a single editorial and fewer letters. Monday opinion pages tend to be a bit stale sometimes because they’re created on the Friday before (along with Saturday and Sunday pages).
  • Arts & Life is reduced in size (and fewer pages are in colour), but no regular features are cut (the HealthWatch column moves to Tuesdays). Green Life, Showbiz Chez Nous, Dating Girl, Susan Schwartz (though she’s off this week), Hugh Anderson’s Seniors column, Applause, This Week’s Child, Fine Tuning (with the TV grid) are all still there.
  • Squeaky Wheels moves off of A2 to make way for the Bluffer’s Guide and the new Monday calendar.

It’s not all bad

On the plus side (and so people can get excited about something), two new features are being introduced on Mondays. A2 features a weekly look-ahead calendar, with information on events to look forward to. There’s also a Monday Closeup, which features an interview with someone who will be relevant to something happening that week. (The first week features an author talking about winning book awards, as the Man Booker shortlist is being announced)

But let’s get back to talking about me

Now here’s where I fit in: I’m the one putting together that look-ahead calendar. So if you know of any interesting newsworthy events coming up, let me know and I’ll see if I can get it in. Take a look at what’s already in the calendar to see what kind of stuff I’m talking about.

Note that the following are not things that will make it into the calendar:

  • Your birthday party
  • Your awesome rock/blues/polka band playing at Sala Rossa.
  • Your garage/bake/charity sale
  • Your book reading
  • Your support group meetup
  • Your $500 basket-weaving training course
  • Your company’s new advertising campaign launch
  • Any of the above replacing “your” with “your friend’s”

I mean, unless it’s really exceptional. Like you’re pulling a plane or something.